What Rants May Come (Monthly Mini-Rants)

The BBQ Pit
41

7 days from now, I’ll be in a hospital room recovering from surgery, wondering what the hell I’ve done to myself.

Maybe.

See, the surgeon’s office never sent in the pre-auth request despite this being on the books for months. I reached out in early April and heard nothing. I finally CALLED a week ago and heard nothing, but the next day I saw the pre-auth was done and approved, the day before.

But it was done WRONG (done as outpatient vs inpatient).

I called immediately and they redid it Friday but it has not been approved yet.

I see the doctor for pre-op on Thursday and I will have words about this screwup. Last year’s surgery, his office got it done WELL in advance.

42

:crossed_fingers:

43

Bowie’s been wearing the same suit for the past 10(!) years; I seriously hope you could look sharper than him!

Self-surgery is really not recommended!

44

Yay! My electricity company is offering to give me $150!

But wait, there’s a small catch. To quote from their recent email:

During high-demand days, we make small temporary adjustments to your smart thermostat to help keep energy running smoothly for everyone.

Translation: “During very hot days, we will be able to turn off your air conditioner until you sweat like a fevered pig.”

I have declined their generous offer.

There are already three nuclear power plants in Ontario. I suggest that instead of messing with my thermostat maybe they should build a fourth one.

45

I pit modern grocery store price vs. quantity shenanigans. Although this has probably been nearly as pernicious since I was a child.

Today I launch off to the groc store for three of my staple items: TP, bar soap, and fabric softener. Pretty basic stuff, and all from one aisle at the store.

My preferred bar soap is Dial. Plain white bars. Not an exotic product. At all.

I typically buy a 3-pack, but they also offer an 8-pack and a 12-pack. A bar seems to last about a month, and I’m a bit tight on storage space, so I don’t generally stock up; that’s what groc stores are for: holding infinite supplies of stuff I’ll need later. Out of curiosity I compare the per-bar prices of the three multi-packs. The 3-bar pack costs just shy of double per bar what the 12-bar pack costs. I’ve heard of “cheaper by the dozen”, but half price! Wow! Color me surprised and impressed. The 8-pack per bar price was about halfway between the 3- and the 12-. How logical and predictable and nice. Yaay Dial. But at the same time I have to conclude they’re ripping off the 3-pack buyers like me by happily selling the same product for half price if you buy an extra few cubic inches of it.

Next up: Downy fabric softener. The “leading brand” stuff your Mom used to use. Not exotic at all. Available in a 66 floz jug, and a mongo 140 floz super-jug with a fancy keg-tapper dispenser. I’d bought a 66 a couple years ago and have been refilling it from a succession of larger 140 floz. I needed a new one, as my old 140 floz was empty and the 66 floz was getting low. So I look carefully at the prices. The 66floz is 10% cheaper per oz than the 140 floz. I’ve been buying a mongo jug, storing it, and fiddling with transferring product between large & small jugs for a couple years now for the privilege of wasting money doing so. Bastards.

Now thoroughly annoyed at the stupidity, it’s time for item 3. Quilted Northern TP. Certainly a mainstream brand sold in every mainstream groc store in the USA.

They sell “mega” rolls in both 9- and 12-packs. In each case the labeling says 1 “mega” roll = 4 “regular” rolls. Seems pretty clear that the 12-pack ought to be 1/3rd more product than the 9-pack. And the 12-pack might cost (ref Dial and Downy) a lot less or slightly more. WRONG.

The size of a single “mega” roll in a 9-pack is different from the size of a single “mega” roll in a 12-pack! WTF! What fresh consumer Hell is this? In a 9-pack a single mega roll is 255 sheets of 3.8 x 4" ea. In a 12-pack a single mega roll is 295 sheets of the same sheet size: 3.8 x 4" ea. So a roll of the same product by the same name holds 295/255 ~= 16% more or 255/295 ~= 13% less depending on which size package you buy. The end result is the 12-pack contains 154% as much product as the 9-pack. When you’d expect it to be 133% more.

Kill them all. With fire.

And just think: this is what they’re doing with physical prices of physical goods at physical stores. Imagine what they can do with virtual prices like at amazon or wherever?


Now’s when I wish we had a federal government that worked. Rape them all and institute absolute truth in labeling regs with a real police force to ensure compliance. Winning through lying isn’t business; it’s theft.

46

I’m sorry what? Do you think you’re being funny?

47

Mine’s quite trivial compared to what some other people here are going through, but here goes.

Two weeks ago, I got really sick and did something I hadn’t done since I was a child: threw up 3 times over a period of a couple hours. It had been brewing all day, but for most of that time, I assumed my malaise was due to a storm coming in and being hungry (until I wasn’t, KWIM?). No diarrhea, so it’s unlikely to have been norovirus.

Anyway, here’s why I’m posting this micro-rant. TWO WEEKS LATER, my appetite STILL has not returned. I’m still basically on some variation of the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast, with some potatoes and soup if I’m in the mood). Yes, I’ve been eating some yogurt for the probiotics, but when am I going to desire a normal diet again?

48

This is on you. It looks to me like you’re just working yourself up with the unreasonable expectation that a product’s price should depend on quantity in a simple, linear way, and that consumers are somehow being robbed if it isn’t.

49

I mean treat those companies roughly. Require them to disgorge the profits wrongly obtained. Put the fear into management at all levels that they will personally be held responsible for the misdeeds of the organization under them.

I do not mean violate anyone’s bodily integrity in any way.

And yes, that was a poor choice of words on my part. Thanks for the call-out.

50

It’s particularly egregious with soft drinks, where I imagine the cost of manufacture is so low that there’s room for all kinds of shenanigans. My favoured container for Coke, for instance, was 300 ml plastic bottles, which don’t seem to be around any more, or at least I no longer see them in stores that used to carry them. But it was by far the most expensive way to buy Coke – an 8-pack of 300 ml bottles would typically cost around 50% more than a 12-pack of 355 ml cans. Do the math. Those bottles are made of plastic, not gold!

Sprite is even worse. A big 2-liter plastic bottle is $3.69. Want the convenience of smaller 500 ml plastic bottles? Those are $3.49 – each! Meanwhile the cheapest way to buy it is a 6-pack of 710 ml bottles, but those are less convenient and in any case Sprite Zero is only available in cans, which are only slightly more expensive per unit of product than the unwieldy gigantic bottles.

51

OTOH, the @Eyebrows_0f_Doom are easily triggered. Some time ago they gave me shit for talking too much, in the opinion of said Eyebrows, about my beloved new Camry.

I think the point being made is that price is often dependent on the aforementioned shenanigans. I’ve often paid the same or even less for a larger container of product “on sale” than the regular price of a smaller one, which leads one to believe that someone somewhere along the supply chain – not necessarily the grocery retailer – is making a very tidy profit at regular prices.

52

Some truth in labeling law requires unit prices so you can do comparison except at one local groc that had unit prices in different units for different brands making comparison nigh impossible without doing calculus, probably mixed in with some geometry & trig, too. Unit price per sheet & per sq ft is not an equal comparison.

All I know is some marketing has gone wrong because the one brand I won’t buy is Charmin. All of those commercials cost money & they are always the most expensive. Not only that but their Goldilocks bear is creepy …& the wrong animal, to boot!

A bear & a rabbit walk into the bathroom & into adjacent stalls. After a couple of minutes, the bear says, “Hey rabbit, does poop stick to your fur?”
To which the rabbit replies, “No”.
The bear then reaches over the wall, grabs the rabbit & wipes his butt. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

53

Please tell me they are financially compensating you for this torture!

54

I thought they were playing on the question, “Does a bear shit in the woods?” with the answer being, “Of course, and they use Charmin when they’re done.” Also Charmin flushes better than rabbits.

55

Besides your other complaints, I’m doubtful that the “mega” roll is really 4x the size of a regular roll, unless they’re using a very loose and deceptive definition of “regular”. I say this because, although there are many different kinds of TP holders, the most common ceramic holders built into the bathroom wall have a limited diameter of roll that they can accommodate. The brand that I always buy, Cashmere, offers double and triple rolls, and I buy whichever happens to be on sale. I was a little leery of the triple rolls for fear that they might not fit in the holder, but they do – just barely. Anything larger wouldn’t fit. The triple rolls were obviously carefully designed for the most common kind of TP holders. For which reason they don’t make a claimed 4x size.

So my guess is that the claimed 4x mega roll is a marketing fiction. If it really is 4x times the size of their regular TP roll, and fits in a regular holder, then it could only be because it is – if I may use the phrase – pretty shitty thin TP. But since I presume that you buy a decent product, I suspect that “marketing fiction” is the more likely explanation.

56

We’ve had threads on the definition of the “regular” roll every brand of TP seems to love to compare to.

What I liked about my example, and what actually motived my post, was the idea that the 9-pack of megarolls said one mega = 4 regular, and the 12-pack of megarolls also said one mega = 4 regular, but the two mega rolls were different sizes!

If one is equal to 4 regular, the other is perforce more or less than 4 rolls.

57

Geez! You don’t flush rabbits, you wash them off & then hang them on the stall coathook via that convenient key chain loop in their foot!


My local brewpub has signs in the bathroom - “Please don’t flush anything other than toilet paper”

Which always makes me think I need to scoop my turds out & put them in my pocket. :laughing:

58

I haven’t put in for overtime, and I’m in “travel mode” for the entire drive, so I get paid for my time behind the wheel. It’s not charity but I don’t get a bonus or anything.

It’s the government, you don’t get compensated extra for putting in more work. But I won’t complain because there are plenty of perks to offset that (like having a real pension).

59

On top of preparing for retirement, the nursing home tells me that my uncle is probably going to die in the next 24hrs.

60

Oh, gosh. They usually don’t say that unless they’re pretty certain.